Hi Jumpugly, what a great genius your father had!

It should also be put on those poor sea turtles. Have you ever seen any videos of sea turtles full of barnacles? Luckily when they find them many fishermen free them by removing them manually.

🤣🤣🤣
Post of the Month Lew!!!!!!!!!

I wondered why I didn't have any barnacles in my stomach - Chilli Powder!

Lew

My Dad used to add the chilli powder to the paint. Barnacles didn’t approve he’d say. 😉

Under-hull painting colors. There are a large variety of colors to choose from. Depends on fresh water versus salt water uses (brackish water tends to use salt water cover), but also subject to what is caused by marine growth including non-barnacle growth. Owner/builder influenced color as well.

I've seen totally black barges which have a mixture of other dark colors due to scraping damage often with contact with another barge of a different color, marine growth, etc. Most look pretty ugly.

It is better to rely on real photos of your subject and environment rather than any hard fast rules.

The only reliable under-hull common color seems to be for salt water is the red protective paint. There are a variety of spray cans close to this color, especially in primers which I use as a finished coat.

Lew
Florida ⛱️, USA 🇺🇸

yes it does on my barge but salt one water areas used have a different coating the white line on the rudder is interesting the Great Lake barges must go along with part of there rudder out of the water mind you have seen a barge hit tug because he didn't see the rudder

I would think that the antifouling paint for fresh water has less chemicals in it, as there must be less chance for any sort of marine growth.
Fred

Do these photos help?

Maybe others will weigh in on this too? Am I correct that tugboats that operate in salt water must be painted with a different type of paint than those operating in freshwater?

So a tugboat working on the Great Lakes or other large inland bodies of water and rivers are preserved differently than those in major ports.

I will put the question to someone who works on them on Lake Superior.

Following a recent trip to Falmouth docks a tug there is painted copper/red paint on the bottom 1/3rd and the rudder is red also above is black

Yes, I would say 90% of Tugs traditionally have black hulls, red anti-fouling bottoms grey or green decks and white superstructure.
I have seen some fleet tugs with red hulls.
For models I spray red oxide primer an the whole outside hull first, then mask off and spray the upper hull black, keeping the original red primer as the bottom colour.

Thinking a bit more on this, at one time wooden ships had copper covered bottoms, so would they have used a mix of tar and copper dust?
That would give a sort of a brown colour.
Fred

Hi Stephen
I for one just don't know that answer to this, the only thing I can say is that all my 1900s steam tugs are all black below the water ling and Red above, the ones that are from the late 1940 are red oxide below.
Fred

I would agree with Lew all you can is check out the internet for pictures and go by that.
Philuk 👍

What I would do is base the color scheme to be the same as the real tug being modeled. If no data on that particular tug can⁸ be found then you might look at similar tugs associated with the subject. That could be those in the same company, region, country.
Lew
Florida ⛱️, USA 🇺🇸